Humanity
by palmtreedragons
Summary: Peter and his father were as different as two people could possibly be. But, heck, they're still family, and family sticks together, or whatever. Spans pre-FC to post-XMA


Family was dangerous, and that was why Erik couldn't have any. They were not a danger to him— No, if anything, they were what kept him anchored to his humanity. But he was a danger to them. To anyone who got close to the worldwide terrorist.

It had started the way it ended: completely out of control.

At first, things weren't so bad. Erik couldn't go to certain places in town; there was a curfew; his people had to wear the yellow Star of David on their clothes at all times, a marking of the Jews. Harmless segregation. Minor laws that were more annoyance than anything else. Something for his father and his coworkers to complain about during shifts, something for his mother and her friends to gossip about as they did household work.

But then the Jews went missing. Vanished. Gone. Work camps, they said, but word soon spread that they were camps for death. Looking back now, all Erik could distinguish of that time was a blur of adrenaline and fear. They were herded like cattle through vicious metal gates, then sorted at seemingly random: who lived, and who died. And Erik was the unfortunate bunch that continued to survive. That was the first time he was aware of his powers. The first time he noticed the thrum of metal and the way it bended at will. And it scared him more than any Nazi could. He was sent to a death camp for his religion. What would people think of a boy more dangerous than any weapon a soldier could carry?

Then he was a lab rat. Shaw, with his methods and his games and his tools of torture. Shaw, who held the gun to his mother's head. Shaw, who pressed the Nazi coin into Erik's palm. It was something Erik thought as comforting, when he imagined his parents ushered into a gas chamber. They were lucky. They didn't have to live on. But when he saw his mother was not only alive, but soon killed because he wasn't strong enough, something in Erik snapped. He had no family; he had lost his anchor to humanity. He had nothing left. Nothing but his powers that made him Frankenstien and his creator. Then Shaw molded him, like Erik molded metal. Shaw, who made the no-name Polish Jew a cold-blooded killer.

* * *

The numbers were a constant reminder. Permanently inked into his arm, a serial number that proved he was one of millions destined to die. But he had survived. And now he was looking for Shaw. Shaw made him into a monster. Something society was better off without. Erik didn't have a soul that knew who he was; no one to call him by name; no one to weep if he were to die. He was a shadow. No—he was a ghost. Something that rose up after little Erik Lehnsherr had withered away in Auschwitz. He was a killer. And he spent the next grueling years alone, detached, and preparing to kill.

But then something unplanned happened. His attack on Shaw had backfired—it appeared the doctor now had fellow mutant followers—but Erik wasn't letting him out of his grasp. He held onto the metal submarine as long as he could, lungs bursting and powers straining, until a voice rang in his head. A foreign voice that belonged to the arms around his neck, encouraging him to go up and breath, encouraging him to live.

Erik, for the first time since mother was gunned down, had a family. They wouldn't dare call Erik family (except for possibly Charles) but Erik had no other word to call them. His standards weren't set high. Someone who knew you—someone who would miss you if you were gone (and even that Erik was still unsure about some people)—that was all he needed. And Charles, the optimist, the teacher, the believer. The one who taught Erik more about his powers than any of Shaw and his tools could teach.

And Charles, the optimist, the teacher, the believer, with a bullet in his back. The one who believed in Erik for the first time in his life was now crippled because of him. Over the next ten years they were hunted; Banshee was dead, Emma Frost was dead, Azazel. All of his so-called family. All gone. It was Auschwitz all over again. Hunted for no reason other than hate. Spared for no reason other than to kill.

* * *

Erik's mess at Cuba had caused nothing but problems for his once-called family. They were separated, they were disbanded. They were no more than acquaintances, at best. And Erik sat in his white cell, oblivious to the outside world. He remained in his prison.

He had routine: meals in mornings and evenings, he would stretch, he would read, sometimes he would play chess with himself. The only way of keeping time was with his meals, and when he felt fatigued. Every so often a guard would be so nice as to give the current date when Erik asked. A year gone. Two. Five. Ten.

The guard was too young, Erik thought as the pre-wrapped meal tray bumped into his small mattress. His grin was too child-like. Also, why was he grinning? Most people didn't grin at Erik, the dangerous mutant sociopath. And then Erik took notice of the note. _Mind the glass._

Glass shattered around him— _the closest to rain I've experienced in a decade_ , he mused—and he climbed out of his prison. The man—no, he's still just a boy—with the wild fair hair and mischievous grin was behind him in a nanosecond, a hand on his neck.

"What are you doing?"

"I'm holding your neck, so you don't get whiplash."

"What?" Erik couldn't help but stare from the corner of his eye. The boy was _excited_. Perhaps not at Erik directly, but at the idea of breaking rules. Erik hadn't had any form of human contact in nearly a decade—years of self-confinement that left him to his reflecting thoughts—and his first glimpse of the world today was this erratic speedster.

"Whiplaaash."

Then they were somewhere else in a second. The boy was talking a mile a minute in the elevator, but Erik was deaf to the questions. He was trying very hard not to lose the contents of his stomach.

"They said you can control metal." Of course. This boy couldn't have broken Erik out of the Pentagon for any reason other than he was contracted.

"They?" asked Erik warily. "They" were either friend or foe.

The speedster went on, oblivious to Erik's inquisition. "You know, my mom once knew a guy who could do that."

If Erik had any time to dwell on that, he might have made the connection. But suddenly he was staring into the face of Charles—optimist, teacher, believer—and he was seeing stars. He rubbed his sore jaw, supposing he deserved that. "Hello, old friend."

It seems Erik's specialty to ruin things for others. His mother died because he wasn't strong; Charles because he was arrogant. Now, on camera for the whole world to see, Erik had just ruined one of mutant-kind's only chances at being accepted into the world. Raven had shot him. She had saved them all from the Jewish survivor turned killer. And once again, Erik was alone, without his anchor.

* * *

He wasn't sure why the woman stayed. The night he met her, and she saw him as just any other man, he told her who he was. He was in rural Europe now, and even if she had called someone about his whereabouts, he could escape easily. And yet, she didn't flinch. She didn't back away in fear, or anger, or disgust. That woman was the first one to show him any positive reaction since that speedster nearly a year ago.

She was the woman he would marry. And soon afterward, she was the mother of his child. Erik had the one thing that seemed out-of-reach since he was a child: he had a family. A real, flesh-and-blood family. A wife who knew his deepest secrets and didn't turn away, a daughter who adored him. He was no longer Erik Lehnsherr: orphaned survivor and cold-blooded killer. He was Henryk Grunsky: husband, father, and friend.

Some nights he would wake up in a cold sweat, dreams so vivid and piercing he sometimes couldn't shake them for days. Before his new life, he was only tormented by memories of the past. Torture and pain and self-pity and self-doubt. But now he was plagued by the future.

When he awoke from those dreams—if he wasn't screaming or shouting—he would creep down the stairs to his daughter's bedroom. Sometimes his wife would catch him standing at the doorway deep into the night, simply watching their little Nina, as if to make sure the nightmare of men taking her away was just that: a nightmare. She would usher her husband to bed, telling him that they were safe, and that no one would come.

When Nina caught her father on those nights, she was awake immediately. She would insist he come to her bedside and sing to her, or to tell her stories. Erik never had much experience with story telling, so he went with stories he knew. Nina would never live to find out, but the stories of the superheroes called the X-Men were nothing of fiction. Mystique and the Professor and the Beast—he never used their real names, because to Nina they weren't real. And he never included Magneto. He wasn't a hero by anyone's standards.

Erik knew on those nights that Charles was right. It was tense and rocky and fragile, but maybe it was possible to live among humankind.

Then Erik saved a man's life. He rushed home, panic-stricken and sick to his stomach at the thought whirling inside his head. He had just jeopardized his whole family. Now more than ever, Erik's nightmare of men taking his daughter were real. And within the hour he not only found out that they had already taken Nina, but they had taken her somewhere Erik could not follow. By that night Erik had killed the soldiers and the workers at the steel factory, and he wasn't stopping there. Because once again, Erik was without his family. And his family was the only thing that had him clinging to his humanity.

* * *

He couldn't get that boy's screams out of his head.

It was absurd; sounds like that were second-nature to Erik. From the time he was but a boy in Auschwitz, he had grown accustomed to the agonizing screams of pain. But during the battle, it was a wake-up call. The speedster was nearly thirty now, no doubt, but he acted and lived with the grace of a happy-go-lucky teenager. He most likely wanted to come out here, beat the bad guys, and go home. He hadn't thought about the fact that he could die. No one at that age did—besides Erik, that is.

Maybe it was the familiarity that jarred Erik; he was the first friendly face he saw when he emerged from his cell. Or, perhaps, it was that fact that he and Raven were just trying to speak to Erik moments before. The boy had clumsily stumbled over his words when Erik asked what he was here for, before settling on, "I'm here for my family, too."

It was the scream of an innocent. Something so wrong you couldn't help but feel the urge to stop it. And with that final terrified scream, Erik's resolve broke. Screw Apocalypse, and the ultimate race, and all of his anger and self-pity. He wasn't going to let that boy die.

* * *

It was one of those midnight revelations. The the type that came when you were drifting, barely conscious, and all the signs you were oblivious to when you mind was at work came together. It was the type that sent Erik bolting upright with a gasp, eyes wide and a single thought ringing throughout his head.

You could say Erik is— _was_ —the most protective father when it came to his child. He never let Nina out of his sight, and when he was off to work, she never left his mind. He would make the world burn if harm came to her—and he nearly stood by that statement until the very end.

And he could not help but feel confused as he saw Peter in battle, and that same feeling washed over. A parental instinct. He had written it off as seeing a child in battle, but most of Charles' X-Men were much younger, and Erik only found them annoying at best.

Maybe it was the looks. Certainly not the hair, but the eyes. Large, brown eyes that mirrors his own. Eyes that mirrored Nina's. Or perhaps it was the child-like behavior of the boy—a man now, almost. Something about him reminded Erik of his little girl.

Then it was the name that bothered him. Not Peter, but his last name. He had heard Charles whisper it to Hank in one of their private discussions shortly after Erik's prison break. They were talking about possibly enrolling him in the school once it was operational. But what was that name?

And it was in the silence of Charles' mansion—Charles' _school_ —that Erik found his answers. Erik was leaving in the morning, with reconstruction complete, and knew this would be perhaps one of the last times he'd sleep soundly for some time. Obviously, he wanted to enjoy this luxury, to simply drift off to restless sleep, but his subconscious was working overtime trying to solve the enigma of Peter. He was just on the verge of sleep when the answer hit him like a brick wall.

It wasn't because of some sympathy for a child in battle, or a reminder of his daughter he couldn't keep safe that he cared for the boy. It was because he was Peter Maximoff. _Pietro_ Maximoff. He knew it was Pietro because he once told a woman he knew that he thought that would be a good name for a son.

What was he going on about before he told Erik he was fighting for his family? _"I'm your—"_

 _I'm your son._

* * *

It was harder to say what shocked Peter the most: the fact that Erik knew the speedster's parentage, or how well Erik was taking it. When Charles saw Erik stalking down the halls early that next morning, he had asked what Erik was still doing at the school. Without even slowing, Erik brushed Charles off with a vague wave.

He found Peter in a study hall, abandoned by the students at this hour in the early morning. As anyone could have guessed, Peter was not studying; he was lounging in a chair, staring at a tank of goldfish. His fingers fidgeted so rapidly they were blurs at the arms of the chair. Erik cleared his throat to make his presence known, and Peter glanced backwards ever so briefly.

"How do you think they do it?" the boy asked quickly. Well, _everyting_ about the boy was quick. "Goldfish, I mean. They just float around the same space for their whole lives."

Erik was wondering if Peter was having an existential crisis, or if this was normal for him. The man's gut twisted at the thought that he didn't even know his son—not really. He didn't know Peter at all. "Peter," he said simply. The boy ignored him.

"Like, do they think? Can they speak? I guess because they live shorter lives, everything seems longer to them. Like, a day for us could be a year for a goldfish."

"Peter, I need to—"

"And do they think as fast as we do? I mean, I guess I think pretty fast. The Professor tried to read my mind once and I gave him a nosebleed. But compared to normal people, do you think goldfish—"

"I know." And with those simple words, the speedster stopped moving entirely. It was almost eerie, seeing Peter as still as a statue. Ironic, as that was one of Erik's traits. There was a long pause. Peter continued to stare at the shiny fish.

"Who told you?"

"No one. I figured it out on my own." There was another silence. Peter still wouldn't meet his father's eye. Erik couldn't meet his, either. The whole night he was attacked with waves of panic. Having Peter as a son was not the source, as shocking as it was. It was that Erik was poison. His parents, most of his friends, his own wife and daughter—all dead. Charles paralyzed. His few remaining friends not caring if he died at this very moment. To have a son, Erik felt more than parental protection. He felt downright terrified for the boy.

Peter suddenly turned, speaking so fast Erik was working to keep up. _"Look, I know that this is awkward, but it doesn't have to mean anything, right? We can just pretend this never happened. I mean, I can stay here, be an X-Man, you can do your own thing. We share blood. So what? I mean, sure, it'll be complicated, and—"_

A hand on Peter's shoulder brought the torrent of words to a halt. He looked at Erik expectantly. "You're my son," Erik stated, simply and slowly. "I suppose that I haven't been the best . . . _father_." He stumbled on the final word, the concept seeming foreign. He was Nina's father. Nina was gone, and yet he still was a father. A father to a stranger.

Peter gave the smallest of smirks. "Eh. I say you rank about a five out of ten."

"A five?" Erik questioned, amusing Peter—his _son_.

"Well, the whole destroying the world thing brought it down a few notches." The two gave each other a small smile—that slight upturn of the corners of their mouth that Peter must have inherited from Erik. Silence fell once more between the two, this time a touch more comfortably than the last. "Are you leaving?"

Erik gave a small shrug. "That depends on you. If you want me gone, I'll leave."

"But if I want you to stay?" the silver speedster questioned, surprisingly slow for him.

Erik allowed himself a genuine grin, if only for a second or two. "I suppose it wouldn't be too horrible to spend a day or two with my son."

Peter leapt from his chair, pumping two fists in the air. "Whoo! Think of all the damage we could cause together! I say first, we pull a prank on Scott, stupid nerd. He always seems like he's got a stick up his ass. The Proff would have to be next—"

Erik groaned, smirk lacing his lips. " _Pietro_."

It was his son's turn to grin. "' _Pietro_ '?"

"If you don't like it, I can—"

"No, no," Peter backtracked hastily. "I like it. It's just . . . no one calls me that. I kinda like it a lot."

It ended the way it started: completely out of control.

In the ten years since Erik had first met his Peter, he went from partner in crime, to honorable X-Man, to son. Things were almost as chaotic inside Erik's head as they were in the school. Peter was unstoppable, bouncing off the walls and running into things and shouting from the rooftops that he had a dad. Erik watched with slight anxiety—the anxiety of a new parent. He had failed his family time and time again, both blood and bond. This son of his, so innocent and childish and carefree and so _unlike_ Erik, he wanted to make sure his son never had to see a dark day in his life. But Pietro was an adult now, all grown up and not needing Erik in the slightest. (It was clear, though, that the young man clung desperately to a father figure after not having one all his life. Perhaps he did need Erik, in a way.)

But Erik needed his son. He needs his son because family is dangerous. It is the one thing in the world that would cause any man to run head-first into a losing battle and give it one-hundred-and-ten-percent. Family is dangerous because it's the one thing in the whole world worth dying for.

He needed Peter because he was the last of his family left. Charles would forgive him, but there would always be uncertainty wavering between the two. Hank and Raven would put up polite fronts when necessary, but they would never trust Erik again. Everyone else was gone.

Everyone but Pietro. He was a new slate. He was someone Erik was determined not to fail. Erik would keep Peter safe until his last breath, because he needed him as much as the boy needed his father. He was Erik's last desperate cling to humanity. If something ever happened to his boy, Magneto would raise hell. In the mean time, Erik guessed he would have to become accustomed to being a dad again.

* * *

 **Every time I read this, I have to take a moment to squeal. Honestly, I think Erik and Peter fics are the best out there, and seeing as it's (almost) Father's Day, I decided to contribute. (Note: this may be my favorite story yet!)**

 **Stay awesome, my dudes!**

 **~palmtreedragons**


End file.
